Monarch Falls

I picked this one up because it reminded me of the premise to another series I read ages ago (The Acts of Caine by Matthew Woodring Stover, highly highly suggest it), and I wanted to see another take on the idea. Essentially, there’s a world within a world—a destination where anyone (with money) can live out the story of their dreams in a fantasy world crewed by employees of a mega corp. Stella takes a PI job offered by Jericho, CEO of this company, in order to pay her family’s bills, and gets sent on a trip through all four quarters of this fantasy world chasing down a fugitive who is there for his own reasons. She gets caught up in the investigation, discovers there’s way more going on here than she anticipated, and gets stuck having to play both sides of the story in order to bring the real criminals to justice.

The story setting is unique and is mostly successful at what it sets out to do. Each quarter of this fantasy world has a different setting, to provide varied stories and backdrops for paying customers. I felt like the first two were depicted the best, but towards the end the story started feeling a little rushed and immersive detail started to be left behind. I do feel like it didn't seem very sci-fi despite the year being far into the future, which was a bit of a disappointment.

The cast of characters is unique and fairly well fleshed out, though again in the later parts of the book some of the late-introduced characters felt a little flat. Stella also felt a bit inconsistent in how she approached/reacted to situations. She’s clearly meant to be a badass female lead, but several scenes had her seem pretty helpless and reliant on the men around her.

I was aso a bit skeeved out by the choice of love interest(s?) for the main character. Relationship/story spoilers here: Corso’s constant Honey-ing (with a capital H in my ebook) grated on my nerves, and there was vague harem-esque tones here with how Henry was set up in the beginning, and Jericho’s introduction as well. Idk, maybe I’m reading too much into it.

It was fine, but I’m not sure I’ll read book two. Seriously though, if the idea of a world created just for entertainment value appeals to you, give The Acts of Caine by Matthew Woodring Stover a go. Much (much much) darker, but very satisfying.